As if to prove the Garden’s Jim Dolan/Cablevision Era is one of wonder and blunder — using $100 bills to light exploding cigars — Monday, with Jeremy Lin just about gone, Dolan’s MSG Network aired this year’s Leap Day Cavs-Knicks game from Dolan’s Garden.

On a strange date, Feb. 29, the Knicks were in a strange place: Still in their extended, unintended Lin-led fun-run.

But it seemed it would end with a pfft. The Cavs were up 16, late first half, and the Knicks, with Carmelo Anthony and Amar’e Stoudemire both returned from injury, had reverted to “put it in the hands of the stars, clear-out ball.”

In fact, Anthony and Stoudemire combined to miss their first six shots, five of them jump shots. But in the second half, Lin, as if defying the NBA’s caste system, played the way he had the previous 12 games, which included a win over the Lakers without Anthony and Stoudemire.

With Lin pushing the ball, always looking inside, always dropping the clear hint to teammates not to run at, then stop in front of defenders, but to make them chase you, the Knicks exhausted Cleveland, ran them goofy.

And the Knicks jump-shooter who most benefitted was Steve Novak, Lin having forced the Cavs to gamble on not guarding Novak in order to try to reclaim the inside because Lin had turned the game into a two- and three-pass layup seminar.

If you must know, Lin played 33:22, shot 6-for-12, scored 19, had 13 assists, five rebounds (two offensive) and one turnover.

But what counted most was that the Knicks won, 120-103. That night, abandoning star-status-basketball, they outscored Cleveland 86-53! And the Garden went nuts.

And so, perhaps, we could view MSG’s choice of programming, Monday, as something of a going away present.

By far, the most frustrating part of the debate attached to Lin’s departure is that paid basketball experts choose to weigh and measure Lin as a stand-alone, individual act, as if he’s a bowler, an archer. The big picture is lost on them.

Lin wasn’t, by himself, all that special. There are a lot of Lins. Or could be. But they’ve been deemed unacceptable in an NBA stuck in no-better-idea, no-braver-idea duplication.

But if we’re to view Lin’s game as a concept, as a better idea for a team game that has been hijacked by stat-headed stars, frightened coaches, signature-model sneaker companies, NBA TV and marketing strategists, then open your eyes! How could you miss it!

In the case of ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who has been extended national and local NBA expert status — his initials could stand for Star Access Suck-up — he spent this week shouting and hollering faux-slick jive that, if believed, would’ve made one recall Lin as a feckless, fad, characterizing him as just “a marginal player.”

But even if Smith’s expertise is bogus, he still couldn’t have missed how this “marginal player” made the Knicks’ other marginal players play as a run-the-floor, drive-’em-crazy, unpredictable winning basketball team.

And it’s not as if the Knicks now are looking for another Jeremy Lin or even a new one or the next one. The opportunities-knock concept he briefly returned to New York — last seen in the Walt Frazier years — has been deemed unacceptable.

“OK, we tried it. We were forced to try it. It worked. It even worked great. The town went wild, too. Now, get rid of it. Too many wide-open layups.”

YES! Blue Jay star’s crash landing made great television

Asked to describe pornography, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said that he couldn’t, but “I know it when I see it.” Same goes for great TV.

On Wednesday, after Blue Jays’ third baseman Brett Lawrie fell — and with a thud that could be felt on Jerome Avenue — into a camera well chasing Mark Teixeira’s foul ball — YES director Jon Wilson presented a series of tape, audio included, that added to the awe as to how Lawrie didn’t break in half.

But the best of the lot was a close-up of Teixeira, standing near the plate and wincing as he watched Lawrie disappear and likely hearing him land. Great TV.

* Have to admire the determination of ESPN’s Mike Tirico and Curtis Strange, yesterday, as they repeatedly heard Tiger Woods curse, yet ignored them as if they were the only ones who heard.

Made us wonder if they’d ignore such behavior from others playing in the British Open, except no one else is known to be such an audible cusser. Then again, no one’s covered as closely as Woods. Regardless, he’s Tiger Woods; he’s entitled.

The only ESPN voice to note that Woods played “unsmiling” and “agitated” golf was Peter Alliss, an Englishman-on-one-event-loan, thus not compelled to ignore from Woods what U.S. viewers can’t miss.

* * *

Despite all the sweet, hopeful spin by Western journalists, perhaps Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Brunei look at it this way:

Now that they will allow their women to compete in the Olympics, it creates more opportunities for their athletes to be ordered to demonstrate their back-turning disregard for Israeli competitors.

And this being the 40th anniversary of the massacre of 11 Israeli Olympians and one German policeman by Arab terrorists at the Munich Games, my guess, given the IOC’s long track record for shameful capitulation and appeasement, is that Arab countries were assured that no official memorial would be conducted — an assurance given before the IOC made that official policy for the London Games.

* Craig Carton, during his WFAN/MSG show, Wednesday, delivered a speech on proper local sports journalism. While one might’ve forgotten for the moment that Carton has become a Garden shill, it was hard to ignore the fact that as he spoke he was wearing a Knicks’ T-shirt.

* YES has rewarded Rafael Soriano’s childish, classless yank-his-shirt-out bit by including it in a Yankee telecast promo.

* The Jets are so desperate to sell tickets to their regular season PSL Stadium opener — Sept. 9 vs. Buffalo — they’ve contacted Bills fans who had been soliciting tickets from Jets season ticket holders on Craigslist.

* Dept. of Can’t Make This Stuff Up: ESPN yesterday interrupted its live coverage of the British Open to run promos that reminded viewers to watch the British Open on ESPN.